SEOUL, September 25 (AJP) - The Busan Museum, located in South Korea's second-largest city, will open a major international exchange exhibition, "Writers Revealed: From Shakespeare to 500 Years of Literature and Art," on September 30, bringing together rare treasures from the canon of English literature. The show will run until January 18, 2026.
The exhibition features 140 works spanning five centuries, including portraits of 78 celebrated authors, handwritten manuscripts, letters, and first editions. Among the highlights is the Shakespeare First Folio, the playwright's first collected volume of plays, which will be showcased in South Korea for the first time. Only about 230 copies of the First Folio remain in existence worldwide. First published in 1623, it contains many of Shakespeare's greatest works, such as "Macbeth" and "Twelfth Night."
Other rare items on display include Shakespeare's only lifetime portrait, a first edition of "Pride and Prejudice," a poetry collection published under pseudonyms by the Brontë sisters, Charles Dickens' handwritten manuscript of "Great Expectations," Arthur Conan Doyle's original manuscript of "The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger," letters by Oscar Wilde, and a Harry Potter first edition containing J.K. Rowling's notes.
More recent works will also be featured, including the manuscript of the 2019 Booker Prize-winning novel "Girl, Woman, Other" by Bernardine Evaristo.
The museum said the exhibition is designed to provide a multifaceted look at the lives and creative journeys of the writers behind some of the most enduring works in the world of literature.
Busan Museum Director Jeong Eun-woo said the exhibition represents "a meaningful opportunity to encounter the great writers of world literature in one place."
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
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